Snoring makes me an irrational, seething, rage-filled lunatic.
My husband, Tony, fell asleep on the couch over the weekend when we were watching a movie. I was still awake and had every intention of finishing the movie. However, between the grating, buzzsaw noises coming from my husband’s nostrils and mentally mapping out where I was going to bury his body, I was finding it hard to concentrate.
After a lot of nudges and a couple subtle requests along the lines, “If you have ever loved me even a little bit you will not possibly subject me to this kind of torture any longer,” I finally got him up to go to bed. He usually just furrows his brow, mumbles some obscenities and shuffle-walks to bed, but on that night he was feeling himself a little. As he was leaving he shoved the remote across the couch – in my general direction.
I was so happy that he was going to bed that I didn’t say anything about the aggressive remote passing. However, over the course of the night it spiraled, as things tend to do with me, into “Remote Gate”.
By the next morning, when he had the audacity to lounge in bed, allowing me to get up to make Conley’s breakfast even after he had nearly decapitated me with the whirling remote of death, I was in a full blown tizzy. The man had nearly killed me by heaving a remote straight at my temple just eight hours before and now he couldn’t even get out of bed and fix our daughter, the one I carried in my womb and had surgically removed from body, some scrambled eggs.
So, I pulled myself out of bed, clearly communicating my displeasure with a dramatic flip of the comforter and a series of sighs of varying lengths. After I fixed the eggs and made some coffee, I proceeded to start, as Tony likes to call it, “the mean clean”.
When I am doing a mean clean, I wipe the counters off like they spit in my face, I sweep the floors like they insulted my child, I fold clothes like I am their unstable pimp. These activities are usually accompanied by more dramatic sighing, a couple of passive-aggressive comments, a good door slam or two and adamant tight-lipped denial that anything is wrong.
The denial lasts until Tony pokes at me long enough and I explode with something logical like, “What’s the matter with me? You want to know what’s the matter with me? Well, I’ll tell you what the hell is the matter with me, buddy! You damn near killed me with the remote last night – that’s what! And, you don’t even care. Had that remote hit me in the temple, I could have died. DIED. Then Conley would be motherless and malnourished because you can’t be bothered to make our precious baby some breakfast! Oh, and you forgot my birthday in 2018!”
Needless to say, Tony’s hysterical laughing made me huff off into the bedroom where I flung myself down on the bed in dramatic fashion and thought about how sorry he would’ve been had I actually died. He continued guffawing in the next room. I eventually yelled, “You’re a real piece of work, Lewis!” He responded with, “I still love you, you nutcase!”
And, that was that. After I recovered from my near death experience, I glanced at my nightstand and saw the picture of Tony and me from our Kindergarten graduation.
Yep, Tony and I have known each other since we were five. We’ve been together for 24 years, married for 17 and we have been parents for 10. We have quite literally grown up together.
As we have grown, we have had periods where we just didn’t like each other, when we got in ruts so deep that we were unsure if we were strong enough to climb out. Fortunately, those have been a minority; for the most part, we have the best damn times. Furthermore, even when he tries to kill me or forgets my birthday, it is his heart that I try to remember. It is one of the best ones ticking.
And, let’s face it, I can be a handful. I am ridiculously pig-headed sometimes. I’m still holding grudges from 1992. I self-soothe by rubbing my feet together at an increasing rate in the bed each night. I think that I am funnier than I am. Sometimes my talkin’ just gets away from me. I’m a neat freak. And, I have an insatiable need to be right.
It usually only takes a few hours after I’m plotting his “accidental” death for me to remember how fortunate I am to have had this man by my side for more than two decades. My husband can still take my breath away simply by walking into a room. He is the Wesley to my Buttercup. He allows me to dream big, while his hard work and determination keeps us grounded.
That doesn’t mean that I’m going to stop getting irritated when he snores during a movie and then tries to Marie Antionette me with a remote. And, every now and then we are going to have a solid Come to Jesus meeting.
However, I am going to make every effort to always remember the cute little Italian boy in his tan leisure suit that captured my heart so many years ago and all of his many wonderful attributes.
- I am going to talk to my husband like he is my best friend.
- I am going to make BBQ meatloaf more often.
- I am going to laugh like only he can make me laugh.
- I am going to tell him when he warms my cold heart.
- I am going to hug him when he gets home from work.
- I am going to admit when I’m wrong (well, I’m going to try).
- I am going to bring him a cup of coffee in the morning.
- I am going to put my legs over his lap when we’ve collapsed on the couch after a long day.
- I am going to send him ridiculous gifs throughout the day.
- I am going to stop stealing his phone charger.
- I am going to remind him how much he means to our girl.
- I am going to let him know how much brighter he makes my world.
I am going to love him more.
Soshally Awkward
Sosha Lewis is a writer whose work has been featured in The Washington Post, Huffington Post, MUTHA Magazine and The Charlotte Observer. She writes about her sometimes wild, sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking past filled with free-lunches, a grimy sports bar, a six foot tall Albino woman who tried to save her teenage soul, felonious, drug addicted parents, an imaginary friend named Blueberry and growing up nestled in the coal-dusted mountains of West Virginia.
